Yuntian Zhu

Nano & Heterogeneous Materials Center, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

Strong and tough materials are desired for light-weight applications such as electric cars. Recently, heterostructures are found to produce unprecedented strength and ductility that are considered impossible from our textbook knowledge and materials history. Heterostructured (HS) materials consist of domains with dramatic strength differences, which causes hetero-deformation, which induces back stress in the soft domain and forward stress in the hard domain. This collectively produces hetero-deformation induced (HDI) hardening, and HDI stress, making the materials strong and tough. Importantly, HS materials can be produced by current industrial facilities at large scale and low cost. There are many scientific issues with such materials that challenge the communities of experimental materials science and computational material mechanics. Heterostructured materials is quickly becoming a hot research field in the post-nanomaterials era. In this talk I’ll present the current advances as well as future challenges and issues in this emerging field.